Metallic Furniture {DIY Tutorial}

Metallic furniture pieces, along with it’s soul-sister counterpart mirrored furniture, is all the rage right now. Unfortunately, it’s also expensive. Here are some examples of some lovely pieces of metallic furniture:

Source: Better After Blog

Source: Furniture Fashion
And if you want a tutorial…

There’s an excellent one here at the source of the above pic: Little Miss Penny Wenny.

Or you can stick around for my tutorial, which involves less steps and less money, but may not be your cup of tea.
Here’s what my little stand looked like. I bought this probably back in 2009 or so for about $15. I’ll never forget the moment I laid my eyes on it…I was driving home from work and I saw it on the sidewalk of a little resale shop here in town. I busted a U in the road, and I was in love with the lovely details on the door. I bought it on the spot and holy hell…that cabinet was a PAIN to put in my car. It was windy and I was in a skirt, but I put that sucker in the backseat and home it went.

Two years later, I am finally ready to make it into something nifty.

The door isn’t perfectly square (see the gap in the upper left corner of the door) and the top was all messed up. Oh and the paint drips in the front, too. What a piece of work.

My first step was to sand the paint off:

But. that was proving to take up a TON of time and sandpaper, so I remembered we had paint stripper because this was around the time of the unfortunate Rustoleum cabinet transformation issue.

Now, let me preface the paint stripper step by saying something to you, dear reader, bluntly. This stuff will effing burn your face off. No joke. You MUST wear gloves (not the cheapy latex doctor kind, but HEAVY DUTY gloves). You must protect your eyes, face, any body part you would like to keep skin on. Yes, skin. I used this when it was windy…OHMYGAWD. Little drops would land on my skin and I felt I was going to die. The only relief I got was when I would run my body part under cold, cold water. Oh and prayer because it BURNS LIKE A MOFO.

There’s a part of my eye glasses that got touched by the paint stripper, and now it looks like my glasses have a bald spot. IT IS STRONG.

Protect yourself like you would from a Vegas hooker, ok? It’s that harmful y’all.

After taking all the precautions necessary, I applied the paint stripper to the cabinet using a regular paint brush:

It’s orange and within seconds it starts eating away at your paint. This picture above is at about 30 seconds after application.

I gave it about 15 minutes and then grabbed my plastic scraper tool (that yellow thing) and the paint scrapes right off. If your piece has a ton of paint like mine did, you might want to do this step a few times. I did it about 2-3 times per side. It is a heck of a lot quicker than sanding repeatedly.

It all clumps together so you can clean up easily.

After you’ve gotten as much paint off as you can, sand it and you’ll have a lovely surface like this.

Now I was ready to paint! Spray paint that is. I love Krylon products and knew I wanted to try out their metallic spray paint for this cabinet.

I bought both the satin nickel and the brilliant silver and sprayed both onto wood to see which color I liked better.

Satin nickel is on left, brilliant silver is on the right. I ended up choosing satin nickel and used 3 cans for this project. I paid about $3ish for each can at Wal-Mart.

And then I spray painted all the sides of my cabinet. I didn’t prime, and in hindsight I should have. It might have used less spray paint, but I am lazy and like quick results. I’ll admit it. I did light, even coats to achieve a smooth, even finish.

I don’t have pics of the next step, but I also had to buy new legs for the stand. I had to buy little silver plates to screw onto the bottom so I’d have a place to screw the leg onto. The 4 legs + 4 plates cost me about $15.
Finally, I brought it all back inside and put it back in my foyer. I love it! And ignore my DIY family artwork (also made using Krylon products)…I love it, but it just doesn’t look proportional in the grand scheme of things.

Then my husband waltzes in…

Then Pee Wee wants to be in the pics, too. I love my family. What a bunch of crazies we all are.

But here she is in all her satin nickel beauty:

A gray lacquer tray from Ross graces the top. A handy place to put my earrings, keys and magazines to read.

A close-up of the finish. While the finish is smooth, I like that it’s not perfect. It looks rough in spots, which was my goal. I wanted a piece of metallic furniture that looked a bit aged.

And from another angle:

I love it. So easy, so affordable.

Cost:
Cabinet- $15
Paint- $10
Legs + Hardware- $12
Time invested: About 2-3 hours total.

Under $40 for a metallic furniture piece (with storage!) for my foyer. Not too shabby. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. As I mentioned before, Krylon did send me products to try out that I am planning on showcasing on here soon (very soon!) but this particular project was all paid for by yours truly. I love Krylon that much. Well, what do you think? Do you love metallic furniture?